


The Sweetest Sound of Death

by HoneyDoodleGem_1416



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - No Death Note, Banshee!L, Banshees, Bells, Family Member Death, Fixation, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Some Fluff, Special Bonds, many years of curiosity, many years of slow burn/pining, nightly wanders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27905395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneyDoodleGem_1416/pseuds/HoneyDoodleGem_1416
Summary: Light is haunted by the mournful beauty of the bell.
Relationships: L & Yagami Light, L/Yagami Light, Yagami Sachiko/Yagami Souichirou
Comments: 9
Kudos: 30





	The Sweetest Sound of Death

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! I am back with another angsty, bitter-sweet one shot. This idea came from the wonderful Skaelds, who left me a comment on my other fic "Bonds of Blood" about how Invisible Man!L could have easily been a Banshee because of his mention of the bell to Light in the rain scene. As soon as I read that, I took that idea and absolutely ran with it. I was so inspired! So thank you, Skaelds, and I hope everyone enjoys! <3

Light first heard the ringing of the bell when he was 6 years old. 

That night, he had laid awake, sleep eluding him as he stared up at his ceiling. His mother had allowed him to leave the sliding glass door to his balcony open, and the crisp night air of Japan blew in, causing his curtains to sway, slaves to the whims of nature. 

While the scent of the outside world flowed strong throughout the room, the shadows were supernatural, demons dancing along the walls and the chests of monsters swelling and deflating with each breath. Light was just allowing his mind to dwell on the contrasting views of his senses when he heard it: the loud, persistent ringing of a bell.

At first he thought it was laughable, the silliness which his ears were convinced was reality. Why, that was as ridiculous, if not more, than the belief that there was a monster in the back corner of his room waiting to gobble him up. So he laid back in bed, shut his eyes, and rolled over. 

But the bell did not stop. 

The sound of it mixed with the wind, complimenting the whistle and the rustle of trees. It was a beautiful sound in its mournfulness. Light was suddenly struck with the image of a woman weeping, fat, sparkling tears running down her cheeks as she choked on sobs. 

He sat up in bed, pondering the curious melody. There wasn’t a church anywhere near his home, and even if there was, no one would be performing a service so late at night. A wedding was his next thought. Western weddings were growing in popularity, at least that’s what his mother said, but no one would get married at this hour either. 

It was puzzling, and more than a little strange. The sound was so powerful and carried a commanding resonance. No hand-held bell could be responsible, not even if a whole school of children were given bells and instructed to ring them in harmony. Clock towers were also out of the question, so what could it be? 

Just as Light thought he would never sleep, now that he was consumed by the mystery of the bell, he found his eyelids growing heavy. He fought it, but his body disobeyed him, its weight more than he could bear. 

Once his head hit the pillow sleep swallowed him up, the sound of the bell throbbing somewhere distant in the back of his mind.

* * *

The bell was gone the next morning. 

From the moment Light opened his eyes he felt displaced, a stranger in a world that was not his own. It only took him seconds to find that there was no bell, no sound but the quiet hum of the wind outside his balcony. 

“Did you hear the bell last night?” was the first thing he said when he sat down for breakfast. His father and mother, faces unusually grave, Light thought, turned curious looks upon him instead.

“Bell? What bell?” said his father.

“No one rang the doorbell last night dear, and I didn’t think we were expecting a package,” supplied his mother.

Light shook his head. “Not the doorbell, Mom. A bigger bell than that… Like at Churches or weddings or that bell tower in London.”

His parents shared a glance that Light immediately read as worried, contempt simmering in his belly. He couldn’t have been the only one who heard the bell. It was far too loud for that. Regardless, Light thought, his parents shouldn’t communicate as if he couldn’t understand them. He was right  _ there _ .

“I didn’t hear a bell like that, Light,” his mother finally said. She moved around the table and kissed his head. “Maybe you were dreaming, sweetheart.”

Insistently, “I  _ wasn’t _ dreaming. I’d know the difference.” 

His mother merely sighed as the sound of his little sister Sayu’s babbles came through the baby monitor. “I have to get your sister… but before I go,” she lowered herself and wrapped her arms around Light, pressing a kiss to his cheek, “Grandma… Grandma is in a better place now, Light. Do you understand what that means?”

Light nodded his head. He had only met his grandmother twice, but the thought of her dying still left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this so early.” His mother sounded all choked up, like she was trying not to cry. Light hated it. “But we’re expected to attend the funeral soon and I thought… I-I thought it would be nice if we visited Grandpa.”

Swallowing down the sourness that threatened to spill over in his mouth, Light nodded again and watched his teary eyed mother disappear up the stairs.

* * *

The funeral was a dreadful affair, even for someone as young as Light was. His family, however, eventually moved beyond it. Things returned to normal. But Light never forgot the bell.

Some nights he would wait for it, actively keeping himself awake to ensure he wouldn’t miss its music. Other nights he would start awake to a sound, only to be disappointed when it wasn’t the phantom ringing he had hoped for. 

After a year he thought he had imagined it. Children were, unfortunately, young and naive. Even he could not fully escape that fate.

Two years later he was proven wrong. 

At 8 years old he heard the bell once more, powerful, commanding, damning. He thought it was beautiful.

The next morning he raced downstairs, once more asking his parents about the bell, their seemingly deaf ears having heard nothing. He was promptly informed, after a silent, concerned exchange between his parents, which was much loathed by Light, that his grandfather had passed away.

At age 12, the bell pulled him out of his slumber and to the balcony. The sky over Japan was clear, no cloud in sight, and yet he  _ still  _ could not find that damned bell. No one was walking on his street. The massive skyscrapers that stretched greedily towards the heavens were still. And yet the bell continued to ring. 

Light stayed on the balcony for the rest of the night, determined to not let it escape him this time. With the rise of the sun brought the fall of the chime, the sound of it dulling and fading until it was lost to Light’s ears.

He was shaken awake sometime later by his mother, though how much time had passed he was not sure. She scrutinized his cheek, pink and dirty from having been pressed against the metal safety rung for too long, and fussed over his bleary, lined eyes. 

Light didn’t tell her about the bell this time and, 3 weeks later, Light’s father received a call about the passing of an estranged family member.

* * *

By the time Light was 15 he had recreated the bell’s sound perfectly. It had taken time, practice, his own money, and incredible patience, but he was confident that the tone he could play was the same melody that had drifted through his window 3 times during his childhood. 

When it had first been created, Light considered playing the sound for his friends in the hopes that one of them might recognize it, have heard what he had been scrutinizing for years, but he quickly threw that thought away. He had an image to uphold and fussing over a bell was akin to the rantings and ravings of a senile old man. More than that, he felt a possessiveness, almost, over the bell, a fact he barely allowed himself to recognize, though the flurry of emotions he felt on the subject were locked up tight within him. So far, only he had heard it and he certainly didn’t make up the sound—nor the 3 instances—himself. No. He couldn’t have imagined it. 

Light played the sound for himself often. It had started off as simple tuning and testing once the sound had been perfected, but Light found his fingers itching, looking to activate his emulator and hear the sound once more. He resisted it at first, was frightened of it, even, but each chime quelled that feeling so exquisitely that he kept coming back again, and again, and again.

Now he needed the chime to sleep. There was never a night where Light went to bed without first hearing the woeful melody. 

If any of his family members heard what he was playing, they never said anything. Even Sayu, whom Light thought was incredibly nosy for her age, had not brought it up. It was strange, but satisfying. Only he was privy to the bell and the other world that it seemed to belong to.

At 16 the bell returned, the  _ true  _ bell. Its pitch found Light sitting rigid in bed, the sound reverberating in the hollow of his chest, warming him. 

Without a second thought, he threw on the clothes nearest to him, pocketed a flashlight, slipped his shoes onto his feet, and made his way to the balcony. One leg slipped over the railing and then another until he was standing on the ledge, lowering himself until his hands touched metal. He hung for a brief moment before letting himself drop the small distance to the front yard, quickly righting his eager feet and pushing past his home’s front gate.

The last time the bell had rung, it had persisted until the morning. He knew he had enough time, but if the sound was coming from somewhere farther away he would be sorely disappointed if he didn’t hurry. He was getting to the bottom of this. Tonight.

His path through his neighborhood was illuminated by the streetlamps, though he didn’t give them a second glance. Even in the dark he could have found his way to the bell. He was sure of it. Its rhythm beat in his heart and his ears welcomed the familiar drone. His body would take him there no matter what.

Rather than the city, Light found himself being pulled past his neighborhood and towards the gardens that surrounded the area. But even that was not far enough for the bell. Its sound called to him, marching him past the urban, organized gardens and into the woods. 

A part of him pulled back, but he never faltered in his steps, pushing past the brush and following the dirt of a hiking trail deeper into the dark. With only his flashlight to show him the way, Light stumbled on the snagging brambles and roots that lined the path. The deeper he went, the more persistent the nature. It clawed at him, hiding the secret he sought and trying to force him to go back, but Light would not obey. 

The ringing was getting louder in his ears, echoing through his bones, and he knew he had to be close.  That was when his foot snagged a particularly thick root. He only had the chance to widen his eyes in shock before he was tumbling to the ground, catching part of his back on the offending root and crying out as his momentum carried him down a slope. He covered his head with his hands as he continued his descent, unable to control his body as it rolled and snagged on sharp branches and snaring vines. 

When he opened his eyes, he was staring up at a sky dotted with stars. His head throbbed and his clothes were in tatters, but his flashlight had landed next to him and nothing felt broken or sprained.

He rubbed his throbbing temples as he sat up, wincing at the volume of the bell. It was shaking his skull now, ringing behind his eyes almost sickeningly. His vision blurred and he took deep, calming breaths, gently rubbing at his eyes and swallowing down adrenaline-induced bile.

Upon opening his eyes, a gasp was almost shocked out of him, only held in by his firm hand clamped over his mouth. He had landed in a clearing that the moonlight seemed to hit perfectly, the grass vainly basking and shimmering in its glow. At the furthest edge of the clearing stood the tallest tree Light had ever seen. Its trunk was massive and contained layer upon layer of undisturbed thickness. The leaves and branches stretched high into the sky, higher than any skyscraper Light had ever seen, almost divine in their natural ability to permeate the bounds of human innovation. Strong, thick roots burst from the ground, weaving above and below the surface to create a labyrinth that led straight back to the tree’s heart. 

Before the tree stood a lone figure that Light couldn’t make out. Their head was tilted upwards in an almost reverent surveillance, features obscured by a long, white cloak that covered their head and flowed out onto the ground behind them. 

Another harsh ringing of the bell made Light flinch, vibrations bouncing around in his skull. After the wave had passed, he stood on unsteady feet and brushed himself off as best as he could, slowly making his way over to the figure.

As he approached, he decided that the figure was male, but he still wouldn’t turn to face him. It wasn’t until the outside of his foot brushed a root that the man turned to him, the force of the motion flinging the hood from over his head to drape down his back.

Startled, Light took a step backwards. While the man wasn’t hideous, he was still off-putting. His large, black eyes seemed to swallow him up, Light unable to tell where his iris stopped and his pupil began. The man’s inky black hair spiked upwards and outwards erratically, though upon closer inspection Light saw that the ends of his hair curled slightly, giving the strands an appearance of softness. The dark of his features heavily contrasted with the milky paleness of his skin, the porcelain pigment of it almost identical to the white cloak around his shoulders. Below his sharp nose was a pair of thin, pink lips, his bottom lip fatter and more plush than the top, almost as if he had been worrying it between his teeth.

If his physical appearance wasn’t enough, his clothes were more than was needed to complete the eccentric look. Beneath the pure white of the cloak was a long, white sweater with a swooping collar that showed off the man’s jutting collar bones. Though he wore pants, they were baggy and odd, made of a material that Light had never seen before. His feet were bare, as ghostly white as the rest of him, yet not marred at all by dirt or grime. Light knew he had to have touched the ground to walk, but if he were anyone else he may have believed that the man had never truly touched the earth.

“I-I’m terribly sorry…” Light stuttered, trying to regain control of his voice while his head pounded out the bell’s anthem. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, but do you know where we are?”

The man blinked once, then looked this way and that, almost as if he were searching for something, before his wide eyes settled on Light once more. They raked over his frame, no doubt taking in his tattered clothes and scratched, bleeding skin, causing Light to prickle with shame. Eventually they trained on his face. “How curious…” was all he said before he stuffed his hands into his pockets and began to prowl around Light, who was struck with an image of a predator hunting and cornering its prey.  The thought spiked fear through his heart and chilled his skin, but something within him knew different. It pounded on a locked door within him to be let out, but Light had swallowed that key without hesitation a long time ago.

“I’m sorry?” Light asked incredulously as the man settled before him once more.

“I said, ‘how curious.’ Can you not understand me?” his monotone voice was muffled by a porcelain thumb on his lips, but the deep timbre of it rolled like thunder through Light’s core, leaving him trembling. He’d never heard a voice quite like that before. “Well?”

Thrust out of his silence, Light uttered a hurried, “No, no, I can,” before looking up at the sky, fishing for the right words amongst the stars. “I just… don’t understand is all. I did ask you a question.”

A grunt was his only answer, the man turning on his heels and hunching his shoulders as he made his way to a rather bulky root. With impressive balance, he stepped up onto it and crouched down, tucking his knees up to his chest and wrapping his knobby fingers around them.

Light balked. Those eyes were still staring at him and that voice was still making a home inside of him, manifesting itself as small tremors. All the while the bell played on repeat in the background. It was enough to make even the most sensible man think he was going insane.

But once the man’s eyes flicked back up to the tree, Light suddenly found that he was able to pull himself back together, dislodging the lump in his throat, returning his heart to its proper position, and forcing it into a normal rhythm. When all was said and done, Light found that he was rather annoyed. “Usually when someone asks a question they get an answer.” He threw the words out into the air casually, but a hint of indignance underlined his tone.  The man on the root made no sign of acknowledgement. He wouldn’t even pay him the courtesy of turning his bug-eyes to face him. “That is if you know how to hold a  _ proper  _ conversation.” The sneering tone was typically below Light, but he was proud of it this time. 

His fingers itched. The bell rang louder.

“Humans are quite fussy…” the man mumbled around his thumb, Light only able to catch a brief flash of his gaze before it was gone. “Does it matter where we are?”

“Humans?” Light snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what I expected from a strange man in the woods, but it wasn’t that. What are you then? A ghost?” A laugh bubbled out of him and he had to pause before he could continue. “And of course it matters. If I’m lost, then I’m assuming you are too.”

A shrug, “Not exactly. I am not a ghost per se, but I am not like you.” The man cast his gaze away from the tree and focused on Light again, “I’m not lost. And neither are you. You chose to come here.”

The curl of Light’s arms around himself tightened, a defensive barrier against the man before him who now truly seemed a threat. “Have you… been watching me?”

“No. Why would I want to do that?” 

He said it so simply, as if it were a common, well-known fact. It made Light’s skin crawl. “I don’t have time for this,” Light snapped, now firmly on the defensive. “Where are we and who are you?”

“Inconsequential and unnecessary,” the other man supplied with a shrug. “Is all you do ask questions?”

“I think it’s more than fair considering you just asked one,” Light shot back, insides curling at his own childishness. 

The man sighed heavily, as if he bore the weight of the world on his back. “I thought my first time meeting someone would be more exciting than this.” After another shrug, he began chewing on his fingernails.

Light’s blood boiled in his veins. He was going to die out here, lost with this insufferable, strange, creepy man and no one would have any idea where he was. And all for what? A stupid bell? The bell that he couldn’t even  _ find _ ? The rage built to a fever pitch until he felt empty, finally giving in and sitting down on a root. He tried one last time: “Why did you come here?”

Round eyes examined him before flicking upwards. “I like this place… It is so different from myself, and yet I feel at home.”

“I think you fit right in…” Light grumbled.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing. What do you mean by that?”

Light watched the steady rise and fall of the man’s chest as he breathed, mulling over his answer in carefully crafted silence. The moonlight did wonders for his appearance, bringing out the beauty in his porcelain skin and causing the inky waters of his irises to shimmer with light. A sharp, painful stab of attraction was immediately glossed over as the man’s rumbling voice left his lips. “As far as I know, this is the tallest tree in Japan. It’s a harbinger of life, prosperity…” he trailed off, now watching Light intently as he took a breath, “while I am a harbinger of death.”

Light laughed. The notion was preposterous, sure, but the seriousness with which it was said brought tears to his eyes. As his shoulders shook, he reveled in the indignant scrunching of the man’s face. “I do not see what is so humorous. You heard the bell, did you not? Followed it here?”

All at once that laughter was shocked out of him and Light was unable to pull air into his lungs. This man  _ knew  _ about everything, the bell, the deaths, everything. “That’s impossible…” His mouth moved on its own, ignoring the uneasy feeling in his belly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “The human is covetous over my sound…” he mused aloud, the implications of his words setting Light’s skin on fire.

“That’s  _ my  _ sound! Only  _ I’ve  _ ever heard it!” 

“Yes, but who created it?” Such a simple flaw in his reasoning, such a small detail. “Who bears its weight?”

“Who _are_ you?” Was all Light could think to ask after the silence between them had stretched on into the realm of unsalvageable. “How do I get home?”

The man’s clothes rustled as he stood up, long, sure strides carrying him far closer than Light should have allowed, but his brain was unconcerned with that for the moment. This couldn’t be supernatural, no. Those things were only in stories. This man was no ghost. A prank maybe? Some elaborate staging? Even a crazy man walking a nature trail and making vague statements that Light had just put together was more plausible than anything otherworldly.

Before he could think it through any more, a cold finger lifted his chin up and he was staring the cloaked man in the eye. Light felt himself drowning in those deep pools, but he couldn’t scream for help. He didn’t want to. 

“Do not fret. You will hear my sound again. I am sure of it.”

Light saw the steady climb of the sun as a fuzzy blur of vivid pinks and soft oranges, his eyes focused on the mystery before him and blurring out anything else. Morning mist gathered until Light noticed that his feet had been swallowed up. The same was happening to the receding figure that he needed to unravel and Light felt him slipping away, escaping between his fingers. When the mist rose to the man’s waist, he gave Light an unfamiliar smile. “I suppose I concede… Humans are interesting.”

With that, he hunched his shoulders, pocketed his hands, and turned, shuffling towards the expanse of forest, shuffling away from Light. Light watched his back until the mist swallowed him entirely, and no more than a second later did it fan out across the ground and settle into morning dew.

A gasp was shocked out of Light. Both the man and the bell were gone.

* * *

Light waited 3 long, impatient years to hear the bell, but its extended absence gave him more than enough time to prepare. After his first and only encounter with the man—Ghost? Phantom? Spirit?—he realized that he had so many questions. They buzzed in his mind like annoying little gnats and he wanted nothing more than to get them out of his head.

Just after his 19th birthday he had the chance; the sound of the bell was ringing through his room once more. He retraced his steps from that first exhilarating, terrifying night, paying close attention to avoid the snagging roots that had plagued him last time. 

He picked out the cloaked figure immediately as he slid down the hill, his head still inclined upwards towards the massive tree. When Light’s feet hit the dirt at the base of the plateau, the man turned to him and pulled back his hood, giving Light a clear view of his chaotic raven hair, which was illuminated beautifully by the light of the moon.

“I didn’t think you would come back,” he said, and a much missed tremble ran through Light’s body.

Light sat down on one of the roots and crossed his legs at the knees. “How could I not after what I saw last time?” 

The other man eyed him but said nothing, Light’s eyes widening, transfixed, as the man’s bottom lip was sucked into his mouth. “Still not fond of answering questions?” He couldn’t help himself. The words had just spilled from his mouth all on his own.

He was rewarded with a small, odd smile. “I do not talk to others often. Questions are trivial to me.”

“Well, you better change your mind, I have a lot of them,” Light said and stood. His heart fluttered and his insides clenched with caution, but he extended his hand to the man all the same. “I want to show you something.”

The dizzying, giddy sensation moved from his heart throughout his body to settle heavily in his stomach as he watched the other man’s eyes widen even further. The moonlight hit them so perfectly that they absolutely  _ gleamed _ , and Light could see himself reflected in them.

“You cannot kill me.” He was moving around Light again with those clean, bare feet that never seemed to touch the ground. “I was never alive and can therefore never be dead. You cannot keep me either, nor inflict pain on me.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Light said, and his words seemed to have shocked the man into stillness. “I want you to come with me. Will you?”

Slowly, a cold, clammy had slipped into his. The weight of it was unfamiliar and so was the tingling feeling that traveled through his nerves to every part of his body. Light had held hands before, but it had never been like this,  _ felt  _ like this. He couldn’t help but laugh when the man’s bony fingers flinched, unsure of their position or the foreign warmth of Light’s skin, and brushed against his wrist. “You have to bend your fingers.” Light smiled, helping to work their hands into the proper position until they fit like puzzle pieces.

As Light guided him away from the tree and through the woods, the man was silent. Even his face was expressionless, blank but highly observant. Those large eyes flitted from streetlight to house and back again, taking in and processing everything. Light wondered if he’d ever been in a more urban area before, but his stomach flipped as he realized he didn’t have to wonder anymore. He would  _ know _ .

He paused in front of his home, the entire street empty except for the two of them, the light from the streetlamps, and the moon’s watchful eye. “This is where I live,” Light said, watching the man’s profile as his head tilted, examining the house. “And this is my neighborhood, in the Kanto region of Japan. Have you been here before?”

Somehow he found the patience within himself to wait for an answer while the man extended his free hand and ran it along the wooden gate that sat at the front of his house. His head tilted again every which way, a gesture that Light had never seen before and that reminded him of an owl. “No… I have never walked the streets of Kanto Japan where you live. I never thought to.” He turned his head so that he was facing Light. “Though I have walked in other areas like this before, yes.”

Light could barely finish nodding before he was asking another flurry of questions. “So how do you get here? Do you always stay at the tree? Are you in Japan often?”

He was met with wide eyes and a blank stare that had his skin prickling from anger, but then a tapered finger was brushing his wrist in what was quickly becoming a familiar way and Light found his frustration dissipating. “I’m sorry. That was a little much.” He gently tugged at the man’s hand and guided him past his house, down the street, and to one of the parks in the area. The bench by the coy pond had always been his favorite, and he pulled the man to it now, the both of them taking a seat.

“Let’s start off simple,” Light said, pulling his hand back and folding them across his lap. “Do you have a name?”

The man looked him over before pulling his knees up to his chest, sitting in the same frog-like position that haunted Light’s memories. “In the sense that you are referring to… No, I do not have a name.” Before Light could get a word out, the man held up his hand, silencing him, and continued, “But I have been called Lawliet.”

The sound of the bell pounded against Light’s skull and his hand flew to his forehead, the initial pain giving way to a fuzzy, dizzying feeling. It was pleasant. “Lawliet…” he echoed, and the name sounded perfect on his tongue. “My name is—”

“Light Yagami,” Lawliet cut in, his eyes now entirely focused on Light’s stunned face.

Though the initial shock winded him, he recovered quickly and laughed. “I don’t know why I’m surprised… Out of everything that’s happened, I should have expected this.”

That brought the odd smile back to Lawliet’s face, and Light soon found that it was infectious. “You recover quite quickly and shift through your emotions almost imperceptibly… Is that something all humans are capable of?”

Light shook his head. “Definitely not… Wouldn’t you know? I’m sure you’ve seen lots of other people.”

“I tend to stay away from people and crowded places. I must do my job, yes, but I don’t ever interact. People don’t seem to know that I am there. Light Yagami is the only human I have talked to.”

Lawliet’s finger was at his lips again and it made Light feel warm, though it wasn’t distracting enough to lose track of the precious information that was spilling from his lips. “I guess that makes the most sense… and just Light is fine. Usually you don’t call someone by their first and last name.”  The wind blew through the trees and rippled the water of the pond. Lawliet’s loose clothes also stirred and were swept up, but unlike Light he did not shiver at the sudden cold of the night air. “I hate to be blunt, but I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t ask. What are you?” 

Beside him, Lawliet shifted so that his body was positioned towards Light, knees still pulled up in his crouch. “Humans have many names for what I am, but I believe ‘Banshee’ is appropriate for your understanding.”

“I’ve read about them online!” Light said, excitement from his discovery and Lawliet’s answers spilling over into his speech. “Though I didn’t know they actually existed… I thought it was just a myth, like ghosts and demons and spirits.” He reached out, then, and brushed Lawliet’s knee with his fingers, unsure what daring came over him to make him do such an impulsive thing. “But you’re real. I can touch you, hear you. Your bell too.”

To his surprise, Lawliet didn’t flinch away from his touch. Light knew now that the man’s sole focus was on him and the thought was enough to make him shiver. “Then you know what my purpose is? I realize that I don’t…” his rumbling voice trailed off and Light could have sworn a faint pink rose to his cheeks, “scream or wail like the humans believe, though some of my kind undoubtedly do take that approach. My bell—”

“Is how you signal death,” Light finished, reinforced by the nod of Lawliet’s head. “I knew that even before doing my research. I heard the bell 4 times before tonight, and each time someone associated with my family died.” He thought about the ringing that was still in his ears, beautiful, melancholic, mournful. “That means someone is going to die soon… Or they already have.”

The man nodded his head and Light watched the curling tips of his hair bob. “Are you not afraid of me?” he asked, and his voice was even. Light had to admit that he felt an odd sort of sadness at Lawliet’s tone. It made it seem as if he didn’t care about what Light thought of him, as if they didn’t have a connection.

“No,” Light replied, “I’m not afraid of you. Why would I be?”

Lawliet waved his hand in dismissal and ushered in a peaceful silence. Light mulled over his questions in his head, the never ending list only growing longer, but the questions he wanted to ask had changed.  “Do you have a home?”

“When I am done in a certain place I am immediately moved to my next location. Any time in-between, as rare as that is, is spent in nature. I have no home, and, even if I was permitted one, no one would let me into theirs.”

Light frowned and took Lawliet’s hand in his once more, even though he was unsure whether the man needed comfort or even felt saddened by his reality. “That sounds lonely…” he said as he stared out at the pond, watching the water gently ripple. “I think we’re similar, in a way. I have a home and a family, but I don’t feel like I belong. Just like how you don’t feel comfortable in crowded areas. I’m in college… but even finding true friends is hard.”  Movement caught Light’s eye and he brought his gaze back to Lawliet. The man had tilted his head and was staring intently at Light’s face, his finger brushing quick, strong strokes across his wrist. “W-what? Are you thinking about something?” Light asked, heat rising to his cheeks as never-blinking eyes continued to watch him.

“Are we friends?” Lawliet asked, and Light’s skin burst into flames.

“Y-yes…” He decided, allowing himself to smile for Lawliet. “Yes, I think we’re friends.”

Lawliet’s characteristic smile stretched wider on his face, so bright and radiant that it almost hurt Light’s eyes. He had never seen the man like this, and Light could only interpret—hope with all that he had—that Lawliet was happy. “Light is my very first friend…” he said, and the look on his face made Light giggle.

He looked to the sky and saw that the moon was continuing its downward descent. The realization that the day would separate him and Lawliet was a heavy weight in his stomach as he turned to the man once more. “Do you know when you’re coming back? When can I see you again?”

Lawliet had followed his gaze and was still staring at the sky even though Light had returned to earth. “I don’t know… But I always return. Nowhere on earth is safe from death.” 

Those big charcoal black eyes met his once more as the sun began to rise and Lawliet began to fade. Light noticed that he had held Lawliet’s hand, fingers laced together perfectly, until the moment that he had disappeared.

* * *

Most of Light’s college years, or what was left of them, that was, were spent in silence. The tragic beauty of Lawliet’s bell failed to float through his window and left Light feeling hollow. He feared that he would never see the man again, but all his worries were quelled one night as he leaned against the railing of his balcony. For whatever reason, he couldn’t seem to fall into sleep’s clutches and had chosen standing outside over wallowing in his bed.

His eyes floated over the empty street and watched the swirl of autumn leaves as they were carried by the wind, the bittersweet smell of nature in his lungs and on his tongue. That was when he saw it, the pure white cloak, feet that never dirty, and a tangled mess of soft black hair. 

Lawliet was walking up his street.

His hands clenched the metal of the rail tightly as he watched the man shuffle along, his hair obeying the whims of the wind and swirling around him. Lawliet made no sound when he moved, nor did the persistent wind seem to produce an audible noise when it ruffled his clothes. The bell he had come to love still did not chime either, but it was Lawliet on his street, Lawliet, who was looking up at him with those deep black eyes.

“Lawliet!” Light called when the man stopped in front of his home’s front gate. “I’ll come right down. Wait for me.” He jumped the railing without hesitation, used to the practice by now, and landed on the soft earth. When he made it to the gate, he pulled it open and stepped out onto the sidewalk, shivering at the coolness of it. In his haste he had forgotten to put on slippers.

“Your feet are bare…” Lawliet mumbled as if reading his mind. “I have never seen Light without shoes. Is the ground cold?” 

Light nodded, but closed the gate and fell into line beside him. “Yeah, a little, but I don’t mind.” Lawliet moved with an easy rhythm that was, at once, hunched and sloppy and gracefully free. Color rose to his cheeks as he realized just how much he had missed him. “I can’t hear your bell. Are you here for someone else?”

Dark eyes flicked to his face. “I am not here for Light or the Yagamis. I am surprised that you can still see me…” His voice was deep and mumbled more to the air than to Light, but butterflies flitted in his stomach. Lawliet sounded almost bashfully pleased, and the thought made his insides clench.

“I would have missed you if I wasn’t on my balcony.” He allowed a sly smile to settle onto his face. “If I wasn’t there when you stopped by, would you have waited for me?”

Unmistakable color bloomed on Lawliet’s cheeks, rose petals against the milky white of his moon-kissed skin. “Would Light have wanted me to wait for him?” he asked, and Light’s lips curled into a smile as he took Lawliet’s hand in his.

“Yes,” Light said. “I think I would have liked that very much.

Most nights he waited for Lawliet to arrive. His visits were neither frequent, nor predictable, but they were enough for Light. Every time they crossed paths his head would be quiet, Lawliet’s bell absent, the death he foretold not meant for his ears.

Sometimes he wasn’t even able to join Lawliet or talk to him for long, but he always watched and those beautiful eyes watched back. Those were the nights that Lawliet came early. The street would still be crowded with cars and pedestrians, stragglers left over from the eventfulness of the day. He often watched, with an odd feeling of pride, as Lawliet weaved through the living bodies. As he had said long ago, people didn’t pay him any mind. They never saw him, not like Light did. 

And Lawliet was growing before his eyes, braving the thing he had despised and doing it so well. Light thought, as silly as it was, that Lawliet was doing it for him. Each time it drifted into his head he rolled it around on his tongue, gauging its candor, and swallowed it down, intentionally weighing his stomach with heavy stones. 

Even without the bell, the adrenaline from his nightly wanderings, and the call of the unknown, Light was still unwaveringly attracted to Lawliet. He missed him, longed for the return of his friend, and was easily satisfied when he was in the man’s presence. He thought it was quite funny that the person he wanted to see most was someone so associated with death. But he was only privy to Lawliet; no one else saw the cloaked man with porcelain skin and intelligent eyes. 

In the beginning, Light had told Lawliet that the bell was  _ his _ , and he had been wrong. But now, as the time between his and Lawliet’s last meeting stretched to almost a year, he wondered how wrong he truly was. The bell was unmistakably Lawiet’s, but Lawliet was unmistakably  _ his _ .

* * *

  
  


A full year passed and Lawliet still had not returned. The time seemed to continue to stretch on, but Light thought of him less and less.

His father was in the hospital. Light was only 23, freshly out of college but not yet established, and his father was in the hospital. He had always admired his dad, who instilled in him a powerful will and unmovable moral principles, but he wondered now, as he sat at the man’s bedside, if perhaps Soichiro Yagami was  _ too good _ . He was integral at the NPA, their Chief and leader, fighting to keep Japan safe, but he was always there, never home. Light had watched him come home with bags and heavy lines under his eyes for years, ever since he was old enough to remember. Light wondered how much he could take, even back then, and it was killing him now.

His mother was at his bedside, combing through hair that was more gray than brown. There were tears in her eyes and Light hated it just as much as he did when he was 6, choked on the bitterness and cruelty of it all. His dad was sleeping, for now, but he didn’t look peaceful. Not with all the wires and machinery protruding from almost every inch of his body.

He had told Light only hours ago how proud he was of him, what a strong, brilliant boy he was. Tears streamed from his glassy eyes and his voice was quiet, so damn quiet that he had to lean forward to hear what he was saying. A few hours ago he was talking. Now he looked almost lifeless.

Sayu was weeping again. Her fat tears rolled down her cheeks and pooled at her soft chin, rounded and defined by maturity. From there they fell past her quivering lips to land on her hands, scattering water upon impact. Light knew she was too young for this. They all were. His father was only 54. 54, and gray hair outnumbered brown. 54, and his skin was wrinkled and lined in deep creases. 54, and his dad was suffering from another stress-induced heart attack.

The steady  _ blip _ of his dad’s heart monitor was dull background noise, but a constant comfort to his ears. It was the room’s only consistent sound beside Sayu’s soft whimpers and his own heartbeat that pounded in his ears. When all the various machines whirred in unison, Light thought it akin to a cruel cacophony of music, a melody of tragedy that his family was subjected to listen to.

“Music…” Light choked out quietly before the air was knocked from his lungs. He heard the bell, Lawliet’s bell. It was faded and faraway, but it was growing closer by the second, tearing his heart in two and sending an aching jolt of panic through him.

His chair screeched against the tile floor as he hurriedly stood up, moving to the free side of his father’s bed and clasping his dad’s hand in his. “Dad!” he whispered urgently, and his own voice sounded far away, unintelligible over the loudness of the bell. “Dad, wake up.  _ Please _ . You can’t die!”

Slowly, his father’s eyes cracked open. Light could no longer hear the  _ blip  _ of the heart monitor but he could see the movement of the line as it traveled across the screen. It was getting slower. His dad looked first to his mom and Sayu, who was standing beside her, head moving in a painstaking crawl as hazy eyes looked up at her. “My dear…” he said, “My daughter.” Light swallowed the lump in his throat as tears streamed freely down his face. The bell was overpowering everything, even his own thoughts. He could barely hear his dad’s wheezy rasping, but made out his unmistakable voice saying, “My son,” before his eyes were closing, a tear ghosting over the bridge of his nose and down his tired, worn cheek.

Sayu’s wails complimented the bell as the movement of the line stopped. Hazily, he watched his mother pull Sayu against her chest and turn away from his father’s body. He watched himself, almost from above, as his body moved to the window. Looking back at him from a few floors down was Lawliet, his head inclined to his dad’s hospital room.

Rage snapped him back into his own body and he tore out of the room, slamming the door open with a ferocity that he hoped could be heard all the way down the hall and to the next floor. Identical hospital rooms passed in a flash until he was stomping through the automatic doors at the front of the building and into the garden area outside it. Dirt tore from the ground in his wake as the distance between him and Lawliet swiftly closed.

Tears were still streaming hot and wet down his face as he gripped Lawliet’s sweater in his fist and yanked with strength that didn’t seem to be his own. The man did not flinch. He did not react in any way and Light felt his resolve slipping until Lawliet himself was slipping from his grasp. With heavy legs, he moved lethargically to a bench just beyond the other man, every step feeling like he was trudging through the clutches of mud. 

Lawliet followed him as he sat down, leaving space between them as Light held his head in his hands and let his body quake. Floods of emotions ripped through him. Grief, anger, regret, hate, all of it built up in his bones but he had no energy to direct it at anything, least of all at the man sitting beside him, so he let the toxins build up and corrupt his insides until he felt dead. Just as lifeless as the person he had lost minutes ago.

They sat in silence for a while and Light’s thoughts turned to Lawliet. They were supposed to be friends… maybe even more, and Lawliet had just marked his father’s passing. The man had yet to say a word to him and Light added that to the pile of things about Lawliet that made him mad. He wanted to be furious, to get his revenge, to act as cruel and vindictive as he had when he first made his way onto the grounds, but he couldn’t. 

He shifted towards Lawliet and let his weight lean against him, using him for support. Inside he was numb and empty, his skin cold like Lawliet’s and his heart broken. The longer that they sat, the more Light doubted the man would say anything. What could he say? It wasn’t his fault that his dad passed away. Lawliet didn’t take his dad from him. He was only doing his job, and Light felt a pang of guilt.

“Do you expect me to apologize?” Lawliet finally said, and the low thunder of his words kindled some warmth in the nearly-extinguished fire of Light’s heart. 

Light used what little energy he had and shook his head, rolling its limp weight along Lawliet’s shoulder. “No,” he said, and his voice sounded unfamiliar, hollow. It cracked where it had once been firm and drooped where it once housed excitement.

Lawliet said nothing more but sat with him as he fell apart and unwound. Lawliet tolerated the tears, listened to his cries and screams and didn’t flinch away. Even when his voice had grown hoarse from misuse, he stayed.

By the time Light felt empty again, Lawliet had wrapped a steadying arm around his waist. When Light looked up, Lawliet turned his head to him and peered into his raw, red eyes, and Light saw himself once more reflected in the dark charcoal of his irises. He didn’t know what it was, maybe some unknown pleading in his eyes or a needy quiver of his bones, but Lawliet lifted the long, tapered fingers of his cold hand and brushed them against Light’s cheek.

Light’s mouth fell open despite himself, much too tired to care about his openness. He had no idea where Lawliet had learned how to do this. Perhaps from one of his nightly wanders down the streets of his neighborhood or in his visits to other countries, but the origin didn’t matter. Light found himself comforted as the fingers threaded into his hair and brushed past his ear, tender and loving. 

Before Lawliet he allowed himself to be laid raw, all of his carefully stitched seams undone and frayed, revealing the truth of his insides. Under those consuming eyes Light felt naked and safe, understanding flickering between them. Lawliet pressed forward, then, and placed his lips to Light’s forehead, and though Light felt the cool caress of death, he had never been warmer.

**Author's Note:**

> Very bitter-sweet, I know, but I thought it was perfect. I had the final line written before I even started, so the story fell into place from there. I'm very proud of this one, and I really hoped you all enjoyed.
> 
> Please leave kudos and comments if you enjoyed! They really make my day and I be sure to read and respond to every comment. Thank you again Skaelds for that little peek into your mind, because it really set off my inspiration and resonated with me. 
> 
> Until next time <3


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